| Engineering Journal 7.3.1.3: Cisco's enhanced IGRP One of Cisco's greatest strengths for connecting NetWare LANs is the enhanced version of Cisco's Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP). Enhanced IGRP provides support for NetWare and AppleTalk networks, in addition to TCP/IP. Enhanced IGRP is a distance-vector routing protocol, but features the fast convergence on changes in the network topology of a link-state routing protocol. Enhanced IGRP issues routing updates only when the network topology changes, transmits only the changed information, and limits the distribution of the update information to those routers affected by the change. As a result, Enhanced IGRP provides low routing overhead, low router CPU utilization, and moderate memory requirements. Unlike link-state protocols, Enhanced IGRP does not require networks to be designed with an explicit address hierarchy, which gives network administrators greater flexibility in connecting and extending existing networks. Enhanced IGRP also makes use of multiple metrics (delay, bandwidth, reliability, and load) to build a more accurate view of the overall network topology and make more efficient use of network bandwidth. Enhanced IGRP can reduce backbone traffic on large NetWare networks by as much as 40% to 50%. Many large public and private NetWare networks have been implemented using Enhanced IGRP on the network backbone because of its excellent scalability and performance. To create an IPX Enhanced IGRP routing process, perform the following tasks:
Task | Command
Enable an IPX Enhanced IGRP routing process in global configuration mode. | ipx router eigrp autonomous-system-number
Enable Enhanced IGRP on a network in IPX router configuration mode. | network {network-number | all}
The following example enables RIP on Networks 1 and 2, and Enhanced IGRP on Network 1: Router# ipx routing ! interface ethernet 0 ipx network 1 ! interface ethernet 1 ipx network 2 ! ipx router eigrp 100 network 1 The following example enables RIP on Network 2, and Enhanced IGRP on Network 1: Router# ipx routing ! interface ethernet 0 ipx network 1 ! interface ethernet 1 ipx network 2 ! ipx router eigrp 100 ipx network 1 ! ipx router rip no ipx network 1